- 1). Remove all furniture from the room. Pry off the floor trim with a prybar and hammer. Hammer down any raised nail heads.
- 2). Set up your circular pad floor buffer with a rough flooring screen. Turn on the machine and immediately begin moving it over the floor with the direction of the floorboards. Work from one side of the room to the other in sections, running the buffer over the boards enough to take up most of the surface gloss.
- 3). Vacuum up the dust.
- 4). Set up the buffer with a medium-abrasion screening pad. Repeat the buffing process as before to take up the last of the surface gloss.
- 5). Vacuum up the dust. Re-load the buffer with a fine-abrasion screening pad. Buff the floor a third time, getting the surface smooth and clean. Vacuum again.
- 6). Sand the inner corners and close edges of the floor with your hand-held power sander to get any areas that were too small for the buffer to get to.
- 7). Open and gently stir your polyurethane. Brush it onto the floor starting at the far corner from the doorway. Brush in the direction of the boards, in slow, smooth strokes. Cover the whole floor.
- 8). Let the polyurethane set for eight hours. Sand it lightly, by hand, with extra-fine sandpaper to dull the surface. Without this step, the next layer will not stick. Vacuum up the dust.
- 9). Apply two more layers of polyurethane in the same manner as the first, lightly sanding between them. Don't sand the final course. Let the floor dry for 48 hours.
next post